Search This Blog

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Chapter 22: What Hath a
Most Perfect Being to Do with a Most Horrendous Hell?

If we were
to answer the question proposed in the title, it would simply be: nothing. A
perfect being would have no use for a hell.

Sheridan
begins this chapter by sharing about his past. His parents were divorced, and
when his biological dad died, his step dad (an Evangelical Christian) said that
Sheridan’s real father had died and gone to Hell. Sheridan wants to know what
Randal’s thoughts are on the subject, and Randal mentions,

“[T]hat’s an area
that I’ve wrestled with for a long time.”

Sheridan
asks:

“Do you
think a God who is, as you say, the most perfect being would really damn some
of his creatures to hell forever?”

Randal
begins by stating that most Christians tend to avoid the problem. Randal says
the fire-and-brimstone sermons are of a bygone time, incompatible with today’s
suburban Jesus, and notes “Most churches dropped the topic of hell years ago.”

When
Sheridan asks why, Randal states that

“Some
Christians take the disappearance of hell as evidence that we are ‘capitulating
to secular culture’ and ‘losing a sense of God’s holiness.’ I agree that
describes part of our increasing discomfort with hell. And I think these are
troubling trends.”

Why Randal
uses single parenthesis to quote what some Christians think isn’t clear. It
seems like he may be quoting those aforementioned Christians indirectly, but he
may just be highlighting the points by distinguishing them from the rest of the
sentence.

What
strikes me as silly, however, is that Randal thinks that people growing less
superstitious is a “troubling trend.” Why would becoming less superstitious be
troubling? I don’t know, and Randal doesn’t care to explain.

Even so,
Randal explains another reason for why hell has ceased to be viable.

“I suspect
that at least some of our discomfort with hell results from a heightened perception
of its morally problematic nature.”

Problematic
is perhaps going to easy on the unethical concept of moral blackmail and the
place devised to ensure loyalty and worship through the threat of punishment
and torture, including those who choose not to worship God.

At any
rate, Randal continues:

“[I]n my
experience Christians often treat the doctrine of hell in a way that parallels
their treatment of herem violence: We
either ignore hell or we misrepresent it.”

Randal then
goes on to say that the idea of hell is much worse than most people think. He
reminds us that the mainstream traditional doctrine of hell holds that hell is
essentially ‘eternal conscious torment.’

For some
odd reason Randal then mentions that Christians believe in different types of
damnation, citing Calvinist Christians doctrine of predestination, and God
sending people, whomever he wills, to hell—but that other Christians believe
there are different prerequisites to getting into the hellfire club.

He then
talks at some length about the Catholic Church rejecting the idea of limbo,
noting that “Christians doctrines can change and develop through time.”

Randal then
informs there is even a split on the concept of salvation, citing theologian
Karl Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians” who would consist of people who
have never heard of Jesus’ atoning death but who may still be saved by Christ.
I guess it’s sort of like Mormon baptism of the dead, in the sense that you can
save the person retroactively, often times against their will or without their
knowing it.

Sheridan
doesn’t buy into the various interpretations of salvation or damnation, but
still wants to know Randal’s opinion about it. Randal goes on to say:

“Christians
are not driven to their views out of hatred for others. Rather, they come to
their views out of a conviction that this is what the Bible teaches. They don’t
relish the doctrine. They simply find themselves obliged to accept it.”

Next,
Randal says it’s important to get the facts straight and starts quoting
scripture. Giving us his own exegesis of Matthew 25:41, he informs:

“I’ll tell
you this much: the ‘eternal conscious torment’ reading of this text is
definitely out of sync with contemporary notions of justice.”

Randal goes
on to add:

“Increasingly,
jurisprudence is focused on reforming and restoring the offender. As for
deterrence, there the rationale for punishment is to provide consequences that
will dissuade others from engaging in criminal activity… Unfortunately, the judgment
of hell fits neither of these rationales. The point of hell certainly cannot be
reformation if the person is to be punished forever.”

Randal then
makes the analogy that the concept of a Hell House,[1] yes
the kind that are popular at Halloween, could represent a virtual
representation of a metaphysical hell that would work just as effectively to
scaring people into being on their best behavior, but admits that “With a divine
hell house there simply is no need for real people to suffer forever.”

Basically
this equates to Randal’s claim that hell isn’t intended as a place for
suffering, per se. Sheridan wants to know, if so, then “what’s the point?”

Suddenly
the chapter comes to a close. And we haven’t learned whether a perfect being
would fashion a hell let alone require one. We haven’t learned much of anything
really. Randal talked a lot on unrelated topics for most of the chapter. Chapter
23 is entitled “An Eternal Eye for an Eye.”

[1]Hell houses are haunted house styled attractions run by Christian organizations.
These depict real life situations of sin, such as abortions and drunk
driving, and the torments of the unlucky damned to Hell for their folly
and transgressions. Usually the attractions concludes with a depiction of heaven
and a voucher that asks if you’d like to repent of your sins—as a hook to try
and get people to ask forgiveness and accept some Christian salvation. Most
Hell house events are typically operated in the days preceding the triduum of Hallowtide.
A popular documentary about the Hell house phenomenom was made by director
George Ratliff in 2003.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Come to think of it, in
the previous chapter Randal never addressed whether or not a Perfect being
would require worship. Although it wasn’t his intention to address this point,
it seems a viable question to ask, as a Perfect being technically couldn’t be
considered perfect if it required worship from its followers, as the Christian
God clearly requires. This in itself is a defeater to Randal’s presumption that
the Christian God fits the definition of a perfect being.

Sheridan then quizzes Randal
on whether or not a perfect God could command genocide, as Yahweh did when he
ordered the death of all Amalekites, including hapless innocent children.

Randal reassures us he
is sympathetic to the point, and goes on to say:

“Look, I’m not here to
defend the ‘home team.’ I’m only trying to pursue the truth as best I can, just
like you. There’s a lot of great stuff in apologetics these days on lots of
topics like intelligent design, cosmic fine-tuning, the resurrection of Jesus
and countless other topics. But it seems to me that the standard apologetic
treatments of biblical violence and Old Testament genocide are very
unconvincing by comparison.”

I find it amusing how
Randal claims he’s not trying to defend the ‘home team’ then launches into a
bald faced advertisement for all the great stuff in Christian apologetics. It’s
a lot like saying that I’m not really trying to sell you a car, but look at
these great cars over here, they’re on sale, and you can get cash back if you
buy now!

What should stand out
even more, however, is the fact that Randal has just endorsed Creationism (i.e., Intelligent Design—although
he probably denies they are the same thing even though it has been legally
verified that they are sponsored by the same types of religious organizations)
and the fine-tuning argument. Both are poor arguments for the existence of God.

How so?

Intelligent design
proponents constantly reveal an embarrassing level of ignorance with regard to
modern biology and the theory of evolution. So much so that other Christians,
who are trained in biology, have called them out on it.[1]
Meanwhile, nearly all fine-tuning arguments also rest upon a misunderstanding
of basic physics. Anyone who thinks both arguments are surefire signs of God
simply reveal the fact that they need to pick up a science book and learn a
thing or two about what the latest science and what scientific minds have to
say on the matter—and scientists almost unanimously agree that ID and fine-tuning arguments do not count on the basis that they are unscientific.[2]

I should point out that Randal is not wrong about
Christian apologists not having any adequate answers to address God’s capricious,
often vindictive, nature as described by the Bible.

As for the claim about Jesus’ resurrection being
evidence for God, I will let the Biblical historian Hector Avalos, and
professor of religious studies as Iowa State University, speak on how we should
approach historical claims.

“If you
assume your five senses and logic provide reliable data about the world, then:

1.“Knowledge refers only to those
conclusions that have been verified directly by one or more of your five senses
and/or logic. We regard “fact” as coterminous with “knowledge.”

2.“Belief” refers to any conclusion not
verified by one or more of the five senses and/or logic. There are two types of
beliefs.

i.Reasonable beliefs are those that,
while not directly verified, are at minimum based on verifiable entities and
phenomena.

ii.Unreasonable beliefs are those that
are not based on any verifiable entities or phenomena.[3]

Avalos then admits that even his criteria could be
held to a higher standard and cites British philosopher and language theorist
Alfred J. Ayer’s formula for what constitutes “knowledge” by citing
epistemologist Robert K. Shopes rendition of it.

Our question, as skeptics, must be does the
resurrection of Jesus Christ even come close to meeting any of these criteria?
It seems, at most, it meets the definition of unreasonable belief. If this is
the best we could say about the resurrection of Jesus, from a historical
perspective, then the claim that the resurrection of Jesus somehow helps
establish the existence of God is spurious at best.

As for the unconvincing nature of apologists, I
would agree with Randal but with one addendum. It’s not just in the area of
violence and genocide that Christian apologetics is underwhelming, rather it’s
the whole of Christian apologetics that is underwhelming and, ultimately,
unconvincing.

Randal follows Sheridan’s lead and offers some
criticisms of Christian apologetics often poor approach in dealing with these
issues. But we’ll skip the majority of it as Randal goes on at length on things
like ‘just war theory’ simply to say it’s not a good enough response. Randal
also mentions that the slaughter of all Canaanite people, including all babies,
as a form of punishment for them having slaughtered some Canaanite babies doesn’t
make logical sense. But I would go on to say much of the Bible doesn’t make
logical sense, because it’s not a book written to be logical, nor was it
written by logical minded people. It was written by simple minded people prone
to superstitious thinking.

Sheridan then challenges Randal to provide reason
for why he believes Yahweh is a perfect being despite these accounts of his
imperfect character. Randal explains:

“Since I believe that Yahweh is the greatest
possible being, I must conclude that he did not actually command these actions.”

That’s right, this is a case of selective bias.
The Bible is just so shocking, and God’s commands revealed to be so awful, that
Randal simply saves God by affirming it wasn’t God that commanded such acts,
but the Israelites acting on the false assumption that God commanded them to
enact such atrocities.

Earlier Sheridan accused Randal of grasping at
straws, and that about describes it. Confirmation bias is something we all must
be consciously aware of, since we all suffer from it, but selective bias—the actual
bias you invoke in favor of cherry picking the good beliefs from your belief system while rejecting the beliefs that aren’t compatible with your current worldview—is an amazing feat of denial.

Randal is denying that the Biblical account is
exactly as it says, and therefore he is also denying Biblical inerrancy, which
he’s taken flack for by other Christian apologists in the past. But in Randal’s defense,
it’s the only way one could approach the Bible and still hold the Biblical God
as anything other than a man-made concept. So what does this say about Randal?
That he’s too rational for his own good or not quite rational enough?

It’s a hard question to answer, since you’d have
to be extremely rational to rationalize away all the parts of the Bible you
didn’t like, but anyone doing that for the whole Bible simply to retain belief
in God couldn’t be all that rational, since one has to be aware they are
using denial to salvage faith. It’s a catch 22 of sorts.

Sheridan then asks Randal, “Are parts of the Bible
false?”

To which Randal responds:

“No, I don’t think so, as long as the Bible is
properly interpreted.”

But didn’t he just say…? Wait, there’s more.

“I’d say that while the human authors may have
said some things that are in error scientifically, historically, or morally,
God nonetheless had a sovereign and perfect reason to include every detail.”

He did, did he?

“In the sense of divine intention there surely is
no error.”

Says Randal.

“[W]hen there is apparent conflict in the Bible,
we need to choose which of the voices in the text will be the authoritative
one.”

So Randal’s fix to the problem is to do, not less
but, more cherry picking?

Don’t agree with the Bible, well, that parts not authoritative.
This other part, the part I like however, is authoritative—so let’s base the
Bible’s authority on our own subjective preferences. That’s the way of a true
Christian apologist!

Ain’t it though?

Sheridan then asks why God, as the editor of
Biblical text so to speak, would include morally offensive material to begin
with?

Randal informs:

“I would see those violent texts as serving as a
foil, a visible parable of human folly and sinfulness.”

Sheridan objects, mentioning that if the Bible was
meant to be read that way, then why has it been so thoroughly misread
throughout Christian history? Randal has no good answer, and admits that is a
problem with his theory, but that

“[F]or now I’m happy just saying that admitting
this proposal as a possibility removes the objection that Yahweh cannot be the
most perfect being because biblical moral atrocities.”

Well, only and only if “p” is true. Does “s” know “p”
is true here? Not in the slightest. So Randal’s objection is really a non-sequitur.

I must admit I found this chapter a little bit
baffling. I honestly am having my doubts about how Randal obtained an
accredited PhD, as nobody I know with advanced learning would have ever written
anything remotely as shockingly bad as this chapter was. At the same time, I
can’t help but wonder if that really is all Randal bases his belief on, simple denials
of incontrovertible problems and controversies. I find myself being a little
dismayed at how atrocious Randal’s thinking is in this area, and I still have
no way to account for it. He's either an idiot who has mastered sophist language, or he's a sophist who can't tell when he's being a complete idiot. I know I just made an attack on Randal's character, and I don't want that to bias anyone's opinion of him, because my opinion really doesn't count for much. But if you wanted proof that I wasn't just attacking Randal but making an observation, all you'd have to do is pick up a copy of "The Swedish Atheist..." and read it for yourself.

In the next chapter, chapter 22, “What Hath a Most
Perfect Being to Do with a Most Horrendous Hell?” Randal will address the
question that’s been on all our minds—well, some of our minds—can a perfectly
good God be the author of damnation and the owner of Hell?

[1]
The American cell biologist Kenneth Miller, a practicing Catholic, responded to
Intelligent Design (ID) proponents in his 2008 book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, in
which he takes to task addressing the objections traditionally lobbied by
ignorant IDers against Darwinian evolution, defends the theory of evolution as
presented today, and shows how ID isn’t even a real theory and so could not
hope to ever replace the actual theory of evolution to the chagrin of
creationists everywhere.

[2]
Professional physicist Sean Carroll, a senior research associate in the
Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, utterly
destroys the fine tuning argument in this lecture about whether or not God is a
sufficient explanatory mechanism.

We begin with a continuation of comparing the
Christian concept of God with the Greek concept of Zeus. Granted, Zeus has more
in common with Jesus than Jehovah, but Randal is playing a little sleight of
hand trick here. Instead of holding up like religious concepts he’s reaching
for the polar opposites and then saying that one of these fits his preconceived
definition.

What are the odds that Randal’s concept of God will
fit the exact definition he selected for it? Odd are probably in his favor.
This prompts Randal to affirm:

“[W]hile Zeus was created by other gods, Christians
and Jews always taught that Yahweh is the creator of all things…. The
difference between various concepts of God is important for eliminating certain
descriptions of the most perfect being.”

Remember my objection to this method of assigning
templates to your chosen God concept
and then holding them up to your
chosen definition the last time? It really amounts to little more than a type
of “naming” game.

Holding up dissimilar God-concepts to your randomly selected definition, and
then saying, this one fits and this one doesn’t, is easy. But in essence, all
one has done is show that some templates
fit arbitrary definitions better than others. Likewise, definitions can be found to be compatible with certain templates. This
is to be expected. But one hasn’t proved anything.

All Randal has done is show that the Greek template
is less compatible with a randomly selected definition for a Perfect God and
that the Christian template is more compatible with this same randomly selected
definition of a Perfect God.

But what if we were to assume that God wasn’t a
perfect being? Well then, the Greek template would be more compatible than the
Christian one, and Randal still hasn’t said why the definition of a Perfect
being is more plausible than an Imperfect being, accept that’s the definition
he likes because it fits with his theological views.

Sheridan then launches into an example of a girl
with liver cancer from Australia whose parents flee to El Salvador to avoid
having to give her the mandatory medical treatment required by the Australian
Law so that they can, instead, pray for hear recovery in accordance with God’s
will. This is Sheridan’s counter to Randal’s claim that God is a perfect being.
The fact that God didn’t do anything to ease the young girl’s suffering is
essentially a version of the Problem of evil, and it is a strong argument
against the Christian God, but Randal doesn’t seem to think so.

“But how exactly does that work against Yahweh’s
claim to be God?”

I don’t know what happened here, but I thought we
were talking about God being a so-called perfect entity. Not God’s claim to be
divine. This is trick theologians like to use when they have no good or ready
answer for the skeptic. They quickly change topics, or raise other points, so
as to bog down the conversation in a quagmire of confusing and irrelevant points—hoping
to throw off the exacting scrutiny of the skeptic.

The question I would of asked Randal is, “Wait a
minute, are you saying Yahweh is claiming to be a perfect God? If so, that’s
easy to disprove!”

Then all one would have to do is reference the Bible.
End of debate. The folly of the apologist exposed.

Instead of dealing with these hard hitting issues,
real world Randal has his atheist puppet do the same thing real world Randal
likes to do, change topics. Sheridan then begins to harp of all the religious idiots
which exist, saying that “as far back as you care to look your God has been
trailed by an unbroken chain of idiots.”

Randal scoffs.

“Idiots? The whole lot of us?”

We feel burdened to answer Randal here, so we shall.
No Randal, not all religious are idiots. But many are. And not to point any
fingers, but have you read your own book? It has some pretty unintelligible
comments in it that only an idiot could make. Does that mean Randal is an
idiot, or that he just wrote a sad example of an apologetic book? I think it’s
the latter. I don’t believe Randal’s mentally deficient, but his brain
certainly seems overcast by the storm of religious nonsense.

Coming back to the suffering of the little girl,
Sheridan points once again to the parents’ negligence and asks:

“[I]s it part of his [God’s] perfect plan that
children suffer agonizing deaths?”

Randal’s defense is rather lame, but let’s allow
him to make it anyway.

“I don’t think those parents correctly understood
God’s will…”

If you find yourself shaking your head that the
best Randal can come up with is the excuse that these good Christian
literalists simply misunderstood God, then where does he draw the line? Hell,
maybe *all Christians are misunderstanding God all the time? What’s his
criteria for discerning who is good at understanding God and who isn’t?

It’s not coincident that if you’re not a
Christian, the reason we nonbelievers are told why we often cannot grasp God is
that we do not have the Holy Spirit to guide us to God’s Truth™. But here’s the
problem, if the parents in the story cited by Sheridan are, in fact, real
Christians, then shouldn’t they understand God’s will because they have the
Holy Spirit?

Lots of problems arise due to Randal’s poor
reasoning, but never mind. We aren’t allowed the luxury to debate real
discrepancies or raise real objections. This is Randal’s grande conversation
with himself, and Sheridan is turning more and more into a nitwit reminiscent,
well, most uneducated apologists.

Randal informs:

“Medical quackery has nothing to do with the
Christian view of God.”

Really? So, does Randal consider the power of
prayer medical quackery? Inquiring minds want to know.

Randal then comes back with this doozy:

“[T]his tragic story could just as well have been
about a couple of atheist parents who favored quackery to proven medical
treatments. I am not sure why you’re blaming the Christian concept of God for
the medical ignorance and foolishness of some deeply misguided parents.”

That’s right. Because atheists have a belief in
the supernatural power of prayer, firmly feel miraculous healing happens all of
the time, and hang on every word of a religious holy text which instructs them
on how to invoke prayer to heal the sick and get their desired miracles.

No, wait. That’s Christians.

How Randal confuses the two is beyond me. But it
seems he simply doesn’t want to admit that unquestioning religious beliefs can
often lead to folly if followed faithfully, because that would be admitting
that one’s religious beliefs are fallacious. There’s a reason medicine works
and prayer doesn’t. If you ever wanted greater evidence for the inefficacy of miracles,
and the impotency of God, quite frankly, there isn’t a better example than the
failure of prayer.

Randal then states:

“Parents subject their children to abuse and
neglect for all sorts of reasons, not just religious ones.”

And although he’s right, it’s beside the point.
Sheridan’s example was a direct objection to a perfect God. If God was perfect,
and was real, then he’d answer those prayers, heal the sick, and work a few
miracles in favor of his faithful followers. The point wasn’t to say there isn’t
child abuse in the world, it was to say that if your God is perfect then he’d
be burdened to have to oblige his followers and answer their prayers as
promised in the holy texts of the faith. Then it’s a matter of whether or not
such a belief compels the parents to neglect their child.

Sheridan then quips, “The fact is that belief in
God promotes fatalism.”

Randal counters by informing:

“The Christians I know believe God works through
modern medicine and that he expects us to use our common sense… there’s no essential
link between theism and fatalism.”

Of course, Randal is wrong on both accounts. There’s
no way he can *know that God wants people to use common sense. That’s just a
wild assertion on his part. Meanwhile, as to his claim that there’s no essential
link between theism and fatalism, I mean, really? Does Randal even know what
Calvinist Christianity is?[1]

Randal and Sheridan continue to argue. Sheridan
asserts that it’s Christians who are frequently doing such things, and Randal
wants to know “how often do Christians do these things compared to
non-Christians?”

Randal then states that the reason Christians get
caught doing abhorrent things happening frequently is quite simple.

“Christians outnumber atheists by multiple orders,
so it’s not surprising we’d have more examples of Christians committing evil
acts—just like we have more examples of Christians committing heroic and good
acts…”

Sigh. Yes, that explains the link between faith
and faith based actions precisely. (Not really).

Next, Randal proves that he doesn’t only partake
of the Koolaid, he flat out guzzles it.

“How many of the hospitals and orphanages built in
the last two millennia were built by atheists? And don’t forget that the
largest mass-murderer of the twentieth century was an atheist.”

Ooh, yes. Evil psychotic mass-murdering atheists.
It’s not clear whether Randal means Stalin or Hitler, but it doesn’t matter,
both are incorrect. It’s a fallacy (association fallacy to be exact) to invoke
either of them because of their atheism, since apart from whatever else they
didn’t believe, they were A) mass murdering psychos, and B) used religion to a
great degree as a means to help carry out their evil design. As Richard Dawkins
quipped, they also had mustaches. Meanwhile, it is well known that Hitler was a
Catholic and Stalin trained in the Russian Orthodox faith.[3]

On the Iron Chariots Wiki page for Stalin, we
learn that

“As the de facto ruler of the USSR, he initiated
many purges. Many clergy were killed and this is often cited as Stalin's
anti-christian mark. However, like Henry VIII he did not simply remove clergy,
he replaced them. He established a new national church of Russia, which of
course answered to him. He considered the church very important to extending
control from Moscow to the satellite nations. Stalin's church was called the
Russian Orthodox Church or The Moscow Patriarchate; and the suppressed church
was called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. They have a bitter
history.

Stalin was many things, a former theologian, the
head of the national church, and one of the most brutal dictators ever. His own
views on religion are difficult to guess. Many scholars think of Stalin as a
ruler who envisioned himself as a god.

Furthermore, there is the concurrent claim that
the USSR was an atheist nation. While the Communist Party suppressed religious
fervor, it did so only out of jealously of loyalties. The Communist Party
demanded loyalty to itself above all others, even above God. Russia has always
been an intensely religious nation. They consider the leader of the Eastern
Orthodox Church to be equal to the Vatican's Pope; or even above the Pope. To
claim that Russia became atheistic overnight in 1917 only to emerge deeply
religious in 1989 is incredibly ignorant.

One may also note that almost all of the leaders
of the USSR, from Lenin to Gorbachev, except for Malenkov, were atheist or
non-religious or did not have their religion documented. Yet only Stalin
committed such historic atrocities. Gorbachev explicitly affirmed his atheism,
but he nonetheless campaigned for religious freedom and was very friendly toward
believers.”[4]

But Randal’s point is well taken. Simply having
religion or not having religion doesn’t make one evil. Accept for, you know,
when having religion does make someone evil … by causing them to fly planes
into skyscrapers or bomb abortion clinics to ensure women don’t get the medical
help they may desperately need, to trying to lobby to have the right to teach
nonsense to children in public schools.

There’s a reason we don’t see atheists doing these
things, but Randal is right about people frequently having a propensity to do
bad things. But that doesn’t address the criticism of good people behaving
badly because of religion and their
religious beliefs.

To conclude this chapter Randal asserts:

“I certainly don’t find that the sins and errors
of individual Christians—or people who claim to be Christians—warrant the
conclusion that Yahweh isn’t God.”

But doesn’t this ignore the criticism entirely?

The point is, if Christians had a direct conduit
to God, to morality, and to miracles like they claim, then a perfect God would
be obliged to act in accordance with his perfect nature, and answer prayers,
cause wondrous miracles which defy our knowledge of the natural world, and all
this in accordance to his perfect plan—which could only be a form of
predestination if God was at all perfect—because a perfect being would be all
knowing by definition of perfection.

So Christians would be morally superior to
everyone else (even with sinners included), they would have the ability to
invoke magic (and things like praying for the cure of your child’s illness
would actually work), and it would be clear that God was working wonders for
his believers but not anyone else (since only those who are in communion with a
perfect being would benefit from this so-called personal relationship), and
this evidence would all go a long way to establishing the Christian God as the
perfect God Randal holds as the ideal type of God in his mind. But this we do
not find.

Instead we find that Christians, based on this
ardent belief in a perfect God, all too often waste their time praying for sick
children only to have the children suffer. And this is a direct cause of their
religious beliefs. All too often Christians make the best sinners, because no
matter how bad you behave, you can always ask God’s forgiveness. And the only
personal relationship it seems any Christian has with God is the one they have
imagined in their mind, otherwise, all these above things would be true rather
than false.

Now, as for the question of Yahweh claiming to be
God, the God of the universe, this isn’t really a claim anyone can take
seriously. We’ve never heard it from the horse’s mouth, but rather, have an old
book filled with myths in which believers held that a mythical deity, not so
dissimilar from any of the other mythical deities of his day, was a God among
gods in a story about Gods.

Therefore the claim that Yahweh must be considered
the one true God simply because some believers believed it and wrote it down in
a book is certainly not a good enough reason to accept the claim. It’s exactly
the same as me asking you to accept Spiderman as a real person because my child
saw him in a book—and because Spiderman fits with what my child thinks a hero
should be. But not Batman. Batman obviously couldn’t be a true hero because he’s
too dark and startles the fine line between vigilantism and the law—and that’s
just un-hero-like.

This is essentially what Randal has asked us to
believe. And it’s so patently absurd that I have to worry about the common
sense, or lack thereof, of those who read this hokum and accept it hook line
and sinker. Which, when you stop to think about it, would be a defeater for
Randal’s ideal perfect God, technically speaking. After all, his God wants
people to use their common sense, but if they did that then then wouldn’t read
books like this.

Chapter 21 is called “Would a Most Perfect Being
Command Genocide?” I’m sure it will probably be more of the same. So join me,
won’t you, as we discover the depths one Christian apologist will go through to
salvage belief in a nonsensical deity.

[1]
Perhaps it would help to clarify. Fatalism is the belief that all events are
predetermined and therefore inevitable. It leads to a bleak outlook, because
without free will, without choice, what purpose could there be to life? At the
same time, Calvinist Christianity preaches the doctrine of predestination. It
is shocking that Randal, who is a theologian, doesn’t know this. Either that or
he’s being deliberately disingenuous here.

[2]
Of course, there is something along the lines of child neglect and abuse for
specifically Christian reasons in the news almost on a weekly basis. Here’s the
latest tragedy:

Monday, November 25, 2013

Getting back into the thick of it, Randal begins this brief chapter with restating every assumption he can think of, affirming:

“The existence of the contingent universe is
enough to show us that invoking God as an explanation is not arbitrary. Thus,
being a theist does not oblige one to adopt an indefensibly complex, arbitrary
view of the world. Further, reflection on the intuitively compelling definition
of God as most perfect being shows that it is possible that God exist, then God
must exist.”

So Randal has asserted, once again, that God is
the explanation for why there is something rather than nothing, and that God is
the most perfect being. As we saw in the chapter before, he bases such
assertions off his intuition. Intuition, which the psychologist Daniel
Kahneman showed to be highly unreliable.

Sheridan then objects that the philosophical description
of God doesn’t take us all the way to the God of the Bible, and asks Randal
what his proof is that the Perfect being is the Biblical God and not, for
example, Zeus.

Randal then says there are two ways to approach
Sheridan’s challenge. Once is to disprove Zeus, and the other is to show that
Zeus doesn’t fit the definition of God that Randal has chosen.

Randal then refreshes the reader in a bit of Greek
mythology, and goes on to ask Sheridan how far can a description vary before it
ceases to adequately refer to the thing it’s purporting to describe.

Continuing on, Randal informs that when holding
various definitions of God up to his (arbitrarily selected) definition of God,
there comes a point where a description will be so far off that it fails to
refer to the definition of God he has settled on as the correct definition for
God.

Of course, what Randal is actually doing here is
naming God, not describing God to any degree. As the language theorist Ludwig Wittgenstein
once observed, naming and describing are different things. In most cases the definitions
people give for God are not proper definitions at all. That is, they are not ‘descriptions’
of God but rather ‘names’ applied to a specific conceptualization. The religious anthropologist Pascal Boyer calls these
religious conceptualizations templates,
and identifies a list of ones which are commonly shared among the world’s religions.
Regarding these religious templates he states:

Boyer then gives a list of several template examples. Number
twenty-one from the list is: Omniscient God [PERSON] = special cognitive powers. This example illustrates one possible template,
and is one of many possible religious representations of God.

Now if a theologian imbues his sense of God with metaphysical
characteristics and/or attributes, such as saying that God is transcendent, all-loving,
omniscient, omnipresent, immutable, eternal, existing outside of space and time,
well, these are just the various templates which other theists and theologians will
use to check their definitions of God against.

As a consequence of having preconceived templates,
however, the religious believer hasn’t provided a reliable description of anything
and nothing has been done yet to provide a meaningful definition.

All Randal has done, in other words, is reinforce
a preferred religious template familiar to his brand of theology. Naturally,
Zeus will not match his chosen template because it is not a template derived from
Christian theology. Even talking about God as a Perfect being falls into the category of one
possible template among many. So, all it seems Randal has accomplished here is
that he has held up the Greek template for Zeus and juxtaposed it against the Christian
template for a Perfect being and observed that they are different templates. This has
nothing to say on whether one religious template is more plausible than the
next.

Randal then mentions some obscure fact about ancient
Christians believing Zeus was a demon.

Then Randal dials on his Evangelical preacher
mode, and closes the chapter with a bit of good old fashioned proselytizing.

“One thing I do know is that even if Zeus exists,
he’s not the most perfect being, and that’s the only being worthy of our life’s
focus.”

I’m extremely relieved that this chapter was short but, at the same time, sort of disappointed that Randal did not show how Zeus was less plausible than
Yahweh. All he established was that they were different concepts, and that the
Greek template for God didn’t match with the Christian template for God.

Furthermore, Randal
is wrong to assume that simply because the two templates differ that the Greek
one is automatically disqualified because it’s incompatible with the Christian
one. What has to happen next is we have to test the verity of each template by establishing which template, of the two, accurately
reflects reality as we know it. The one that matches reality then is most likely the right template, and
the one which doesn’t match reality will be disqualified.

In chapter 20 Randal addresses the question
whether a most Perfect being would have an imperfect church? Why would a
Perfect being require worship at all, is what I’d like to know. Maybe we’ll
find out?

Sunday, November 24, 2013

As I continue to look at Randal Rauser’s The
Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails, the more I
feel that I should have done an overall review of the book rather than a
chapter by chapter summary review. The problem is, the book is already running
long, and instead of making clear points, Randal often confuses the reader by
quickly changing topics, going off on tangents, coming back to other topics,
and often forgetting to follow up on other so-called rabbit trails he went
down, but then stopped cold for some reason.

Overall, this makes the book rather difficult to take
in. Not because it contains big ideas, but because these big ideas are not
presented clearly. As such, this is not a book I could recommend anyone. Don't worry, if you give up on this book after only a few chapters, it's not your fault.

That said, let’s get this show on the road.

Chapter 18 begins with Randal explaining:

“I’m certainly not claiming that the statement ‘personal
cause of the universe’ is a religiously satisfactory definition of God. But
even if that description doesn’t say all a Christian wants to say about God, it
certainly says something important. Christians believe that God is the creator
of all things and thus that the question ‘Why is there something rather than
nothing?’ has a personal answer: God.”

Sheridan again asks how Randal can be so certain
it’s the Christian God? This is a point that Sheridan has raised nearly every
chapter, so it seems Randal’s reluctances to answer it right off the bat has
something to do with him wanting to massage away the painful criticisms of God,
via apologetics, before he tackles the issue. There really is no other reason
to put it off, as it is a pretty straight forward question.

Randal then informs that the first requirement is
to supply more “specificity to the general concept of God.”

Yes, that goes without saying. If you want to
prove the general concept of God is your concept of God, then you will have to specify.

As such, Randal quotes the medieval Christian
theologian Anselm’s definition of God, and goes on to state:

“God is the
greatest conceivable or most perfect being. It is not possible to conceive a
greater being.”

Sheridan then contends that this is rather an
abstract philosophical description for the quote, unquote “Christian God.” To
which Randal responds:

“[I]f God exists, he simply must be the most
perfect being. But as long as we’re positing God, it’s legitimate to define God
as the most perfect being there could be.”

For some reason Sheridan goes along with it. Maybe
the apologetic trick of simply re-asserting baseless claims you’ve already
asserted a thousand times have worn Sheridan down, but really, Randal has no
reason to assume God is the most perfect being. Nowhere has this been
established. But for the sake of the argument, and to save on a lengthy
tangent, we’ll let it slide this once.

Sheridan also lets it slide, and demands to know
where one goes with the definition of God after that. Randal then affirms:

“Well, saying that provides a helpful way to
eliminate those descriptions that fail to meet the demands of the definition.”

Randal then cites the Mormon concept of God as an
example which fails the test. But how is the test not arbitrary? After all,
Randal merely looked around and arbitrarily selected the definition of God he
liked, in this case Anselm’s definition. Moreover, what does he do about other
God-concepts that meet all the criteria for the definition but are not the
Christian God? In Africa, the Akan people of Ghana believe that the deity Nyame
is the God of All Things, and their theological description of Nyame meets all
the criteria of Anselm’s definition, just to cite one example.

So now the problem is compounded, not only does it seem
to be arbitrarily selected, but now other deities that fit the criteria of the
definition can be arbitrarily put in place of the Christian God. This is a big
problem. And of course, Randal would probably do what most theologians do and
hold up their template of God to the template of the Akan people’s God and then
nitpick the details until he could find enough divergence with his theology to
dismiss it as not-Christian. But that doesn’t prove the Christian definition
true, since the Akan people could likewise hold their template up to the
Christian template, find where the Christian God diverges with their theology,
and then dismiss the Christian God as not Nyame.

Most apologists try to avoid this conundrum by
simply denying the validity of other people’s definitions of God, but this is
also an arbitrary act—since there is no reason to prefer one’s deity over
another when one hasn’t compared, contrasted, and tested both theological
claims. Furthermore, another area which proves to be a thorn in the apologist’s
backside is the fact that The One True God™ and The God of All Things™ could
very well be the same God, simply known by different names.

Randal then seems to have a candid moment of
clarity in which he affirms:

“[Y]ou can’t say God is whatever you like. I think
the Anselmic concept is so basic that every description of God has to be held
up to it. If a particular concept of God appears to result I a deity that’s
less than perfect, then we need to revise either our understanding of God or
our understanding of perfection.”

Sheridan then strikes back with an even more
devastating criticism, stating:

“Just because you come up with a description of
God doesn’t mean that your God is real. You can’t just define God into
existence.”

Randal ducks the questions and instead asks
whether or not “it’s possible that the greatest conceivable being exists…?”

Randal then describes how if the definition isn’t
in anyway contradictory to what we know, then it is at least plausible that,
according to such a definition, such a thing—in this case a Perfect being—could
exist, saying, “If they do exist, then they exist contingently.”

Then he raises the point that numbers exist necessarily.

Sheridan objects that numbers are not God, and
wants Randal to cut to the chase. Randal obliges.

“When it comes to God—the being than which none
greater can be conceived—that being cannot exist contingently, like a beach
house…. Because a being that must exist is, all things being equal, greater
than one that only happens to exist but might not have existed.”

He goes on to add:

“I’m depending on an intuition to make that claim,
but I think it is a strong intuition.”

Ah-ha! We have found Randal out. He knows God is a
being than which none greater can be conceived because he has had an intuition!

Well then, it must be so! It’s not like our
intuitive thinking is problematic or anything.

Oh, wait, it is problematic? How so?

In Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s
groundbreaking research essay “Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and
Biases” published in Science
magazine,[1] the
two researchers documented the main biases of intuitive thinking, described the
simplifying shortcuts of intuitive thinking, and demonstrated the role of
heuristics in judgment. What they found was a set of 20 common biases that
everyone is susceptible to and which always must be accounted for in order for
intuitive judgments to be more accurate than not. In other words, our intuition
is not at all reliable.

In his excellent book Thinking, Fast and Slow,
Kahneman observes:

“The spontaneous search for an intuitive solution
sometimes fails—neither an expert solution nor heuristic answer comes to mind.
In such cases we often find ourselves switching to a slower, more deliberate
and effortful form of thinking.”[2]

This slower form of thinking is called “analytical
thinking” and is named, specifically for the fact that it deals with the
analysis of relevant information to make better, more accurate judgments than
if one were to rely strictly on intuition alone.

To say one believes in God, or a type of God,
based on intuition alone is the equivalent of saying one believes their random
choice of pony will win at the horse races because they have a hunch. But given
more information on the competing horses, one should be able to make an
analytical judgement. Let’s imagine our horse was running against the famous Seabiscuit.
Would it make sense to bet on our horse over Seabisucit based on nothing other
than our intuition?

Of course not! If one is basing their choice of horse on intuition
alone, and they are ignoring Seabiscuit’s impressive statistics, then their
intuition is going to be wrong nine times out of ten. Something other than
intuition is required to make accurate judgments, in this case, which horse is
the better runner. So we must look at things like statistics, and we’d use
analytical thinking to analyze which horse statistically wins more races than all
the other horses, and basing our judgment of the probability that this horse
wins more frequently than the other horses, we’d most likely bet on a horse
that has won most of its races.

Therefore, reason dictates we should bet one
Seabiscuit because he is a thoroughbred that won 11 of his 15 season races,
ultimately going on to defeat the reigning Triple Crown champion War Admiral in 1938
at Pimlico, in one of the most famous horse races of all time.

The analogy shows that if we went by intuition
alone, we’d end up being wrong more often than not, because our intuitive
thinking is not as accurate as our analytical thinking.

I often feel theologians, like Randal, put far too
much faith in their intuition that God is real, or that God has this or that
attribute, because, as Kahneman’s research has shown us, intuition alone isn’t
sufficient for making correct judgments about the world.

Randal goes on to add:

“If we accept the definition of God as the most
perfect being, then it follows either that God must exist or it is not possible
that God exists. To put it another way, if it’s possible that God exists, then
it’s necessary that God exists.”

My question would be, what is the likelihood of
his intuition simply being wrong here? I think it’s rather quite high. In fact,
the very notion that our intuition is known to fail us to astonishing degrees,
and that analytical thinking is often required to balance our reasoning so that
we’re simply not always mistaken, it seems to be a good rule of thumb to keep a
healthy skepticism about our intuitive judgments.

Sheridan says it sounds like a type of gamble, and
Randal informs, “That’s not too far off, although I wouldn’t exactly
characterize the discussion as a bet. It’s really just a matter of definitions.”

Two things. In actuality, it really is more about
a matter of probability. As with the example of Seabiscuit, letting intuition
dictate your judgments is a type of gamble—in this case the gamble that your
intuition is correct.

The second thing is that, I think it’s safe to
say, Randal is correct in noting that it’s a discussion of definitions, and
ultimately, semantics. But this raises a big problem with how Randal chooses to
define God, because he is, technically speaking, talking about concepts as if
they were real. This usually leads to a form of semantic confusion rooted in incoherency
that is common within theology and more so within religious apologetics.[3]

One example of this confusion would be to define
God as transcendent. But by the very
definition of transcendence (existing outside of reality), we cannot test for
this property of God, so there is technically no way to demonstrate God is a
transcendent being. Therefore, to talk about a Transcendent God as if it was an extant being creates an
incoherency, because we would be talking about a hypothetical abstraction as if
it were literally a real world physical object. And imaginary-real things are self-refuting.

What clever apologists do, however, is simply
ignore the problem of incoherency. They will talk about God-concepts all day long, only to, at the end of the day, proclaim
God is real. It’s not so unlike how theoretical physicists will talk about
String Theory. They will talk about it in terms of mathematical abstractions,
but at the end of their day, they can only posit String Theory as hypothetical
model, full well knowing there is no evidence to confirm it as anything more
than a mathematical abstraction.

Of course, this demonstrates the key difference
between scientists and theologians. Scientists are duty bound to be honest
about their mathematical abstractions being little more than fancy conceptualizations
(at least until it can be demonstrate otherwise), whereas theologians do not like to admit their theological abstractions are concepts too.

Sheridan then opts to take the option that God
does not exist rather than God existing necessarily. Randal tells him to hold
up. That while it’s easy to find a contradiction in terms with something like a “square
circle” it’s not so easy to find a contradiction with the idea that God is “a
most perfect being.”

Sheridan then suggests the concept of a perfect
being simply may not be meaningful. Randal responds, asking:

“What’s not meaningful about the concept?"

Sheridan goes on to point out that Randal is,
essentially, comparing apples and oranges. Examining the most perfect rainbow,
for example, has nothing to say on the perfection of the most perfect tiger.
Saying God is the most perfect being, then, says nothing on the perfection of
most perfect rainbows or tigers. They’re different classes altogether.

Randal’s answer, of course, requires us to put on
a hockey mask—that is, if we don’t want to break our faces with yet another
dangerously powerful face-palm.

Randal informs:

“I agree that not everything is comparable in
terms of absolute perfection to everything else. But it doesn’t follow that
everything is not comparable to God, does it? Even if we can’t compare redwoods
and tigers to each other in terms of perfection, it doesn’t follow that we
cannot compare them to God. And if God is the creator and sustainer of all
things, then it seems very plausible to conclude that God is greater than all
things.”

I have re-read the above quotation at least half a
dozen times, and each time it makes less and less sense to me. Usually,
profound points are meant to clarify an issue, or hone an idea, and make it
accessible to us. It seems the only thing Randal has accomplished here was to take a whole bunch of words, toss them together, and make a fancy word salad.

Notice the only thing we actually learned from the
above quotation is that God is the “sustainer of all things.” After which Randal merely states that "it doesn't follow that we cannot compare them to God."

But this is merely another unfounded proclamation of
faith. Instead of explaining why something is or isn’t, and demonstrating his
claims, Randal merely resorts to proclamations of faith. This is what bothers
me about this book. It often is little more than Randal reaffirming that he
believes in Christianity instead of explaining why he believes in Christianity.

Sheridan brings the chapter to a close with a
question he has raised repeatedly throughout the book, and which seems Randal
may finally get around to answering.

“So what makes you so sure that your God is the
greatest?”

Chapter 19 is entitled “Why Zeus, at Least, Isn’t
God” and I can’t help but feel this is going to be a dangerous analogy for
Randal, because he is basically going to explain why he doesn’t accept Zeus as
a real deity, and this answer will most likely be the same reason atheists do
not accept Yahweh as real. But, of course, Randal will deny the equivalence. I’m
interested in what his reasons could possibly be for such a renunciation.

[3]
In my book Ignosticism: A Philosophical
Justification for Atheism, I discuss why our definitions for God are more
likely to be conceptual rather than real. I justify this claim by showing
that the descriptions one uses to define God relate back to hypothetical constructs and not literal referents, thereby highlighting the fact that talking about abstractions as if they were a real object brings with it a problem of
incoherency.